[conspire] CABAL in the time of Cholera^W SARS-CoV-2: March event cancelled

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> Y2K is not a good analogy at all.  
> 
> the cure for Y2K is not shutting down Western Civilization, which is the
> proposed cure for this virus.

It's truly unfortunate that you utterly disregarded the actual (valid)
comparison I made and, instead pretended as if I had made an entirely
different (stupid and invalid) comparison.  This embarrassing public
blunder on your part would have been avoidable if you had exercised a
tiny amount of impulse control and _thought_ before posting.

The _sole_ point of comparison I made is that it was possible to make
Y2K seem like a non-event through diligent hard work behind the scenes
that prevented a technology-failure blowup and then allowed idiots in
the press and elsewhere to draw the non-sequitur conclusion that there
never had been a threat in the first place.

By comparison, it is provably possible through painstaking but pervasive
public health measures to slow down community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 
in the USA to the extent that an overwhelming of and collapse of the
nation's medical system (such as recently happened in Italy) will be
averted, 


> Is it being overblown, 100%.

Fuck off, idiot.  And this time, _this_ is the sort of idiocy that can
cause tens of thousands of deaths of people lying on gurneys in hospital
corridors, suffocating from ARDS.  (Look it up.)


> No, I don't go along with these current actions.

OK.  So, seek out crowds and spend your days breathing on each other.  
Maybe Roosevelt Island can be isolated and dedicated to housing the
small subpopulation of NYC Dunning-Krueger (look it up) basket-cases who
'disagree' with public health measures.  The City can call over every
few days and ask how's it hangin'.


> Putting this in perspective, our closes analogue is the 1917-1920 flu
> epidement.  My grandmother was born in 1917.  In New York City,
> theaters, sports and other public ciritical cultural venues remained
> opened:
[blah blah]


I am willing to spend a couple of minutes putting this 'in perspective':

1918, Philadelphia vs. St. Louis experiences, in one comparison chart:
https://bshm.org.uk/can-history-help-us-in-the-covid-19-epidemic/
(scroll down for the chart).

After becoming aware of the Spanish Flu in September 1918, St. Louis
authorities took strong measures to prevent assemblies of people
including cancelling a city-wide parade.  Philadephia blew off the risk
and did essentially nothing.  The resulting death rates above base-line
for pneumonia and influenza in the two cities for the subsequent months:

Philadelphia:  257 per 100,000 population
St. Louis:  31 per 100,000 population

In case you're also math-challenged, that's an eight-fold higher death rate.


And, Ruben, if you wish to court death this year, I might suggest that
pretty much any method of exit is preferable to suffocating from fluid
in your lungs.